How to Get into Healthy Posture
You can’t get into Healthy Posture with a few stretches or exercises. Getting into healthy posture requires that you restore optimal alignment of each vertebra in your spine to maximize force transfer and movement control. This optimal spinal alignment is best achieved by aligning your pelvis, rib cage and skull. Restoring your ability to align your pelvis, rib cage and skull requires a game plan.
The Problem:
We have spent a majority of our lives in collapsed posture. Our bones and joints are conditioned to function from less-than-optimal alignment. The muscles have remodeled around these misalignments and do not know how to function from neutral spine alignment and will resist any efforts to do so. We must restore your ability to “stack” the upper back before we can unload the neck and low back.
The Solution:
The first step in restoring your ability to get into healthy posture is education on the 4 Principles of neutral spine alignment. We use the term healthy posture and neutral spine alignment interchangeably.
1. Chest Lift®
2. Head Nod®
3. Pelvic Curl®
4. Inward Spiral®
How to Get into Healthy Posture:
Movement #1: Stack your upper back to unload the neck and low back via a Chest Lift®. This positions your rib cage in its neutral position. It also positions the skull on top of the rib cage, pulling you out of forward head posture.
• Correct: slide your shoulder blades down the rib cage to stack your upper back in such a way that your sternum lifts slightly and your skull repositions on top of the rib cage.
• Incorrect: Do not pinch your shoulder blades together, this only locks you into forward head posture.
Movement #2: Unload your neck by repositioning your skull into its neutral position on C1 via a Head Nod®.
• Correct: from Chest Lift® posture gently rock your skull back until your eyes are looking straight ahead. This is a very subtle contraction of the muscles under your skull that pull you out of forward head posture.
• Incorrect: Do not perform a chin tuck and give yourself multiple chins.
Movement #3: Unload your low back by repositioning your pelvis in its neutral position via a Pelvic Curl®.
• Correct: Contract your lower abdominals to suspend the pelvis into its neutral vertical position. This is a subtle contraction that drops your tail bone slightly.
• Incorrect: Do not contract your butt muscles and lose your Chest Lift® posture.
Movement #4: Restore symmetrical loading through the hips and knees via an Inward Spiral® of the hips.
• Correct: Contract the muscles on the inside of your hip to rotate your hip internally in such a way that restore symmetrical loading through the big toe and little toe.
• Incorrect: Do not collapse at the ankle to transfer more weight through the big toe. The knee should not move.
There are many strategies you will need to learn, and physical wellness milestones to achieve to condition yourself to function from healthy posture. We developed the Healthy Posture System™ to provide you with all the video resources needed to safely restore your ability to function from neutral spine alignment. Join our newsletter to learn more about how to age healthy physically with neutral spine based functional fitness.